Category: Motivation

Give Yourself A Chance To Get Good

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

For the most part, I don’t like doing things that I’m not good at.

I prefer doing things I’m good at. Especially as I get older, I find I dislike being “bad” at something. The more expertise I gain in my respective fields, the more I find I enjoy — and gravitate towards — things that I’m already good at.

When we were children, we spent ample amounts of time being frustrated, learning and figuring out new things. We did it every day, a hundred times a day, sometimes even a hundred times a minute.

On a single day in Kindergarden, we learned how to tie our shoes, comb our hair, dress ourselves, how to share and play with others (sometimes not so well), what splinters were, whether landing from a big jump was painful or thrilling, how to make daisy chains, what paint is, what happens when put stuff in our noses, and how to stand in a line to get lunch. The teacher had activities for us planned every fifteen minutes and our brains were always expanding, never saturated.

As a result, we were tired — we conked out for nap time twice a day and consumed peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and goldfish and apple juice. We were constantly running around, wondering why on earth adults were so tediously repeating to us that we ought to “slow down!” (Of course, as every five-year-old knows, why slow down if I can get there rightnow?)

And then, somehow, we became adults. We made it through the awkward-bobbly teenage angst years and even through college and asserted our independence, autonomy, and maturation through increased levels of responsibility, decision making, and ability. I have a general understanding of what a 401K is and why I need it; I believe in the time value of money through compounded interest; I hope to make informed decisions when voting in a democracy; I show up to work on time; I’ve made a life list and learned how to say no; I understand the value of saving for a rainy day, and I am, to every five-year-old, a boring adult.

Now what? Am I done learning?  I like to think that somewhere inside of every adult still lies our inner five-year-old, the monkey-ish person who bounces in meetings and runs in the halls instead of walks, who says what they think, and asks the most obvious (and the most interesting) questions about how the world works, and why it works the way it does.

I like to look back at my 5-year-old self and take a cue from the crazy girl running around on the playground and try to remember what it felt like to be at that pace of learning, growing, exploring, and being frustrated. When I get frustrated with learning new things, especially if I shy away because it’s hard or difficult — or i’m not yet any good at it — I think about how i would measure up to my 5-year-old self.

Quite frankly, she would probably kick my ass at her skill-acquiring ability. Granted, the complexity of the skills we learn as adults may not be comparable to our abilities as a kindergardener. But there are still lessons:

  • The first time trying something new is usually filled with effort, struggle, energy, and a low satisfaction-to-energy ratio. Why fall on your face 20 times trying to do handstands if you’ve already perfected sitting in a chair comfortably?  If, however, you only did what you were good at, then you would be done learning. Imagine, then: nope, I’m not going to try that because it’s something new. Can’t do it, sorry.
  • In work, it can take slow, dedicated, frustratingly long amounts of time to get good at something. At times, I’ve contemplated leaving my job because of the day in and day out exhaustion-frustration of tasks being difficult and new. But what holds me to my desk is the fact that I’m learning, no matter how discouraging it can be — and that staying at home, or doing something I already know how to do will not yield the same satisfaction or sense of accomplishment when I tackle, acquire and absorb new skills, techniques and knowledge.
  • The downside is that you can’t always tell how long it will take to “get good” at something. You don’t remember how long it took you to learn how to tie your shoes — now you just know how to do it.  And you do it automatically. And you’re probably pretty glad you practiced every day of that month in kindergarten, because the more you practiced, the more quickly you learned the skill.  You won’t be good at something for a while — not until you put in effort, energy and perseverance.
  • It’s inherently humbling to be in an entry-level job: the tasks vary from ridiculously easy to frustrating, over your head, and complicated. Sometimes the most difficult challenge of new tasks is figuring out how to figure them out: learning how to learn. Each day I walk into the office prepared to be surprised, to learn, to explore, research and discover. I’m never “done learning.”

And sometimes, it takes a long time to get good at something. It’s been said that it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert at something.  Given that a year is (roughly) 2000 work hours, then figure it takes a least five years to become good at something. That’s five full-time years — it will take longer if it’s a hobby or a part time endeavor. Get grinding … see you in 5 years. So if you’re struggling in the first 1, 2, or 3 years of a new job, first, breathe a sigh of relief: you’re right where you should be.

Give yourself the chance to learn.  Leaving because learning is hard is never a reason to quit. The lesson in not giving up?

Give yourself a chance to get good at something.

Do something useful

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

In Time’s 10 questions interview with Elon Musk (co-founder of electric car maker Tesla), Musk talks about his experience building the Tesla electric car company, his belief that most people can become entrepreneurs, and his strategies for successful start-up companies.  In a word, Musk says that companies will be successful when they are doing something useful for other people.  Become an entrepreneur, he encourages.

And “do something useful.”

I love this. My seeming obsession with the question “what do you do?” (as evidenced through the Professional Focus interviews throughout this blog) stems from my unending curiosity about what, exactly, it is that people “do” every day – whether it’s behind their desks, in swanky offices, out and about in the field, at home, or spending long hours behind a computer (like I often do).  I’m still not convinced that the nine-to-five model (or, as it’s becoming more common, the eight-to-eight workday) is truly the most effective way to work. I’m also baffled when I hear stories about long, tedious workdays that seem to have no end and no conclusive purpose. And thus I ask: What do you do?

I’ll admit, this has often led to a series of bad-date-esque scenarios where I’m hounding a person with questions about their daily existence.

Me: “What do you do?”
Them: “I’m a __________ ”
Me: “Nifty. So what do you do each day?”
Them:  “I check my email, go to meetings, respond to questions.”
Me: “What kind of questions?”
Them: “You know, client emails and such.”
Me: “How do you know when you’re done with your work?”
Them: “Well, I just go home when I finish tasks.”
Me: “Who defines these tasks?”

… and it goes on. My apologies to those who I’ve already badgered with questions: I’m not trying to be a nuisance, I promise.  I’d like to better understand the work day and how we define our tasks within our organizations. Often, it seems we spend a lot of time doing things that seem to just fill up our time.  And with time becoming more and more valuable, especially if you find yourself busier, in demand, or beginning to take on the role of project management within your firm, I find myself constantly asking: who is it for? why are we doing it? And what processes do we use to get these tasks done? The big question “what do you do” is inherently linked to my further curiosity about why people do what they do.

Beyond the immediate functionality of my work habits, I also reflect on the type of work that I am producing in the long term: Am I doing something useful for our clients? Is the work we produce something I am proud of? Is there a tangible goal or product that I have worked on? How can I do better next time? Does my work have meaning? There is no “right” answer to the questions I’ve posed. Fundamentally, I want to understand what we do, why we do what we do, and how it is that we get our work done. Much of my research and reading centers around these questions, and I’m a big fan of The four hour work week by Timothy Ferriss, the 80/20 rule, What color is your parachute, and recent writing by Martha Beck. It is through this exploration and reflection that I can be critical and reflective of my own habits and productivity.  Tomorrow morning, as I head back into the office, it will be refreshing to focus my thoughts on one question this week:

Am I doing something useful? Because Musk nails it, in his advice on entrepreneurship and starting a company. This advice translates to everyday tasks as well as larger questions about our work habits and company goals.  During my down time between projects (a rare occurrence it seems), I reflect and ask myself: am I doing something useful with this time? Am I doing something useful for my organization? How am I setting up tomorrow’s tasks to run more efficiently? Do something useful: do it for yourself, in your own time, and for your time working on projects or in the office.

Thoughts on failure

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about making college and career choices. It was a response to an email I received from a previous student resident of mine, asking my opinion about making college decisions, choosing a major, and building up a life plan. In my response, I talked about failure:

“Failures are not failures, they are successes. If you spent five years learning about something and trying it out and realizing that it’s not for you, it is NOT A FAILURE. You’ve learned, analyzed, grown, deliberated, decided – and chances are you have acquired some useful skills along the way. A failure means that you’ve tried. Appreciate the opportunities you have to explore, learn, and practice. Even if you change your mind again in five years, you’ll still have learned about how to communicate, practiced business, budgeting, managed projects, made friends and new contacts, etc. The list never ends.”

I want to expand on this idea of “failure.” Wikipedia defines failure as “the state or condition of not meeting a desirable or intended objective, and may be viewed as the opposite of success.”

I find myself wondering, why is failure such a bad thing? Why is there such a stigma regarding failure, and why do we discourage ourselves from starting, trying, or fixing things because we’re afraid that in doing so, we might fail? I tend to disagree with latter half of the Wikipedia definition – a failure may result in not meeting our desired objectives, yes, but it is most certainly not the opposite of success.

Some further thoughts regarding the idea of “failure,” in no particular order:

The only failure – ever – is a failure to try. The most lingering disappointments, I find, are from opportunities that I’ve ignored or challenges that I’ve declined to embrace. The tough stuff is what teaches us about ourselves, expands our life experiences, and allows us to change and grow.

To try – and to “fail” – is to FALL, not to FAIL. To try, no matter how unsuccessfully, is to learn.  You might consider the opposite of failing rather as “falling.” That is, sometimes we fall flat on our face. We go all-in, back to the wall, in-it-to-win-it to succeed. And we fall short. Way short sometimes. This is not a failure. The more gutsy the attempt, the more admirable the fall.

Falling is hard. It’s embarrassing, discouraging, and scary to fall — and it can be downright hard. But being in the trenches, learning, is what leads to future successes. Every step forward gives you the chance to learn and to grow. We get feedback on how we are doing, we learn more about ourselves, and we discover our capabilities. And, if we’re lucky, we know better (albeit somewhat painfully) what steps we need to take to improve our performance for the next time.

Learning takes time. A friend of mine had the best advice – it’s now a favorite quote of mine:  “When you learned to walk and talk, it didn’t all go well at first .. at least for a while. We’re silly human people and we need to practice things before we do them well.”

The concept “failure” happens when our expectations are not in line with our effort. We feel “failure” most poignantly when our expectations are not in line with our effort. At times, you may find yourself faced with the harsh reality that what you’ve expected or anticipated hasn’t turned out how you thought it would.  The bigger the discrepancy, the more uncomfortable and disappointing the failure can be.  By not recognizing the steep learning curves around us, we can become discouraged by our lack of expected success.  “Success” takes more than belief, courage, and hope: it also takes hard work, effort, and often incredible amounts of perseverance and energy.

Focus on the positive, even during downturns. Be thankful for chances, opportunities, and challenges. Even if you hate your job, are stuck in a terrible relationship, are a million miles away from your home, or undergoing an arduous challenge, there are still positives. You have your job. You are exploring and you are learning. You are meeting new people. You are stretching the bounds of what you know, how you perform, and what you can be. And thus, my last random quote on failure:

“There’s nothing more to live your life by, that wake up each day and say yes, this I will try.”

And thus, I am thankful for failure, thankful for falling, thankful for opportunities. I’ve learned to walk, talk, and read. For now, I can only ask: What’s next?

Thoughts On Negativity And Fear

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

Yesterday I felt my negative attitude — towards my job, my career stumbles, and my unfinished projects — slipping away. I had several days of negativity cloud me, follow me, and I couldn’t shake it. I was scared, I was worried, I was afraid. I felt like nothing was going right.

And today, I woke up happy to be alive and excited to go to work. I felt free, finally, knowing that I could change my thoughts just by acknowledging them. It was as if yesterday I finally turned around, said hello to Mister Negative, and asked him if he wouldn’t mind leaving me alone for a bit.

Negative attitudes can have a gripping, corrosive quality to them. If you wake up each day and say to yourself, “My life sucks,” or “I hate my job,” or any other number of discouraging, depressing phrases, you’ve got a problem with a negative attitude in your life. I spent several days avoiding the emotion, and it didn’t work. It turns out: I needed to address them to figure them out.

I’ll digress with a short story from my years in college and high school athletics. (Non-sports fans, bear with me.)  In my college years, I was a swimmer. At one of our year-end critical team meets, I found myself standing behind the blocks, wearing my slick shark-skin swimsuit, goggles strapped tightly around my head, and for some reason I couldn’t stop shaking. I had a thought running over and over through my brain: that I was going to lose. I was so obsessed with–and worried about–the idea of losing and failing, that I forgot to think about my race strategy, my love of competition, or my excitement about the opportunity at hand. Fear had gripped me so tightly that I was sweating, and repeating the same thought over and over in my head, to my own destruction. “I don’t want to lose.”

In sports, they say that fear is only your enemy when you let it take over your actions. Fear and negativity can only control you when you let it take charge of your actions and your behaviors. In the pool, I was trained to look fear in the eye, acknowledge its presence, and be honest with myself about why it was there. Often, the best path to overcoming fear and negativity is by taking a good hard look at it. As soon as you look it in the face, it seems smaller–less important– sillier. Fear often grabs us with an idea that we can’t control–and in this case, I couldn’t control whether or not I won or lost, because even if I did my absolute best, someone else could be better than me. My competitors seemed huge, unbeatable.

And when I realized that I wasn’t looking at Fear, but I was hiding from Fear, I remembered that I had the power. And then I stopped shaking. I looked at Fear through my pink metallic goggles and I said to Fear, “What is it that you are afraid of?” And meekishly, I heard Fear say back, “I’m afraid of losing.”

It continued: “I am afraid of doing a bad job. And… I think that if I don’t try, then it won’t matter if I lose.”

And just like that, my rational mind said to Fear: “Well, if you don’t try, you can’t win, either.”

And I felt fear sit down and think about that.

The coach from the other team leaned over the rails. He looked at me and looked over at the tall, lanky swimmer next to me. I saw him pointing at me, and then yelling advice to the other swimmer. He yelled “Just stay with her for the first two laps!” I looked at her and I looked back at the blocks in front of me. I snapped my goggles in place, stepped up on the blocks and thought to myself, “Just you try to keep up with me, lady.” My feet exploded off of the blocks.

But back to the office. (It’s much less thrilling than racing and competing.) And what does this story have to do with an office job? When we’re confronted with negative thoughts and feelings–and there are very few people I know who haven’t dealt with fear and negativity–sometimes the best thing we can do is sit down with the emotion.

I had let fear and worry–about my imperfections, my lack of knowledge, unknown job security– take over my ability to do a good job at work. As with sports, fear and negativity in the office can only control you when you let them take charge of your actions and your behaviors. Afraid of doing a bad job at work? Worried about getting a raise? Nervous about the presentation you have to give? Look it in the eye. Acknowledge it, and ask it why it’s visiting.

Often, saying hello is all we need to figure out how to proceed.

The Last Lecture: Golden Gems from Randy Pausch

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

If you found out you only had 6 more months to live, what would you want your legacy to be? What would you tell your friends, your family, and your loved ones?  We all wonder what our memories will be, and what thoughts, values, and ideas we will leave behind should we suddenly be faced with the end of our lives.

For Randy Pausch, professor at Carnegie Mellon and father to 3 kids (age 18 months, 3, and 6 at the time of his writing), The Last Lecture is his response to his sudden diagnosis with terminal cancer in 2008. Just a short time before he passed away, Pausch delivered a powerful lecture that reached an extensive audience, ultimately reprinting his “last lecture” as the best selling book by the same name. Re-reading his book, I find his collection of thoughts and tidbits are timeless and valuable. These are my favorite Randy Pausch quotes, by topic:

On challenges and overcoming adversity: “The brick walls are there for a reason. They’re not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something.”

He was also a fan of saying,”Cherish your Dutch Uncles.”  This expression refers to a person who gives you honest feedback. These people “help us recalibrate ourselves” by showing us who we really are. The best teachers are those that push us, that demand excellence, and perhaps make us squirm a bit. Cherish these teachers – they make us better people.

Also, remember that in times of adversity, you still have control.  “No matter how bad things are, you can always make them worse. At the same time, it is often within your power to make them better.”

On life balance, and time management: Here’s what I know,” he says, in sharing his advice and wisdom: “Time must be explicitly managed, like money,” “You can always change your plan, but only if you have one,” and  “the best shortcut is the long way, which is basically two words: work hard.”

On careers, life, and happiness: Respond and listen to things that give you what he refers to as a “visceral urge” – pay attention to the things you like, and be honest with yourself about them.  Pausch loved Disneyland, and wanted nothing more than to be an Imagineer.  He followed his dream – ultimately doing a sabbatical with Disneyland and becoming an Imagineer for a few months.

As an educator, he would always tell his students that “smart isn’t enough.”  In addition to being intelligent and well-educated, to succeed, you have to be a team player, help other people out, and make other people happy to be there with you.

When the going gets tough?  “Experience,” he says, “is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted.”

On people: “When we are connected to others, we become better people,” and remember, you should “always be a team player.”

On complaining: “Too many people go through life complaining about their problems. I’ve always believed that if you took one-tenth the energy you put into complaining and applied it to solving the problem, you’d be surprised by how well things turn out.”

On failing: If you are going to fail, fail big. He rewarded his students for taking challenges, attempting hard things, and being fearless of failure. He created a “glorious failure” award – which he dubbed “The Last Penguin Award,” – dedicated to “the notion that when penguins are about to jump into the water that might contain predators, well, somebody’s got to be the first penguin.”

Randy Pausch epitomizes “living a full life” — and throughout the book, I nearly cry (every time!) over the sadness of a father knowing that he has to leave his wife, kids, and jobs behind at too early an age. His wisdom fills up a small little book – worth picking up as a bookshelf reminder of how to get what we want, figuring out what’s worth it, and how to live life a little bit better each day.

Jump start your next project: If not you, then who?

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

Today was a typical day at the office. There is a challenging task ahead of me, a pile of work on the desk, an application to be put together and several meetings to attend.

At home it’s the same story: there are several backlogs of articles needing to be written, stuff to do to catch up on “life,” friends to visit, and a side project that I’ve been letting slide for quite a few months. Tonight I hesitated when pulling up the document on my computer, dreading the task of “more” work in the wee hours of the night, even though in the long run I really am excited about my project.

I sat against the kitchen counter, drinking a glass of water and staring off into space. I usually close up early and head to bed, putting the project off “until tomorrow.”

But a trusty quote I haven’t heard in a while popped in my head as a reminder to get started:

If not now, then when?
If not you, then who?

We hear all the time, “Don’t ‘should’ all over yourself,” “Stop putting pressure on yourself to do more,” and “You already have everything that you need.” These quotes are reliable motivators that help us get through the week, to take the pressure off our backs, and to let us breathe, relax, and enjoy the spaces between deadlines and dreams.  I am a huge advocate for a balanced life and taking a break from work. In many cases, these mantras help us get more work done by reducing our stress load and increasing our productivity.

Some days, however, we need to kick it up a notch. Remind ourselves of what we want to accomplish and what our long-term goals are. On these days, I hear my old varsity coach in my ear, whispering:

If not NOW, then WHEN?

If you’re not going to start now, when will you start? If your dream is a tomorrow dream, when does today become tomorrow? When does “when” become right now? If you wait until the time is right, you may never start. Get up behind the starting blocks, get into the grind, and dedicate right now to your dreams.

There are huge, daunting, terrifying tasks and goals we have, and sometimes we put them on the back burner because of insecurities, fears, or worries we have – about our capabilities, about our dreams, about failing, about being able to live up to the people that we want to be. There’s a safety in staying put, in living the status quo, and being who we are today – because it’s familiar and comfortable.

The other unfortunate thing about putting our dreams on hold is that too often we see people who have done or are doing what we’ve dreamed of – and we think to ourselves, man, I wanted to do that.  Maybe you had a brilliant idea for reorganizing search engine capabilities (google) or setting up a social networking site (facebook) or making an application for organizing data better, or creating a franchise of corner coffee shops (starbucks, peet’s, etc). And maybe someone has already done it. Maybe multiple people have done it. And again I hear my coach saying to me:

If not YOU, then WHO?

If you don’t do it, someone else probably will. Everyone has a mix of opportunities, challenges, and setbacks that present themselves to us on any given day. The people who make it look easy have put in the hard work, day in and day out, and figured it out. The perfect scenario doesn’t exist, and if you’re waiting for it, you may be waiting in vain. If it’s not you, then it may be someone else.

Make it you.